Experimental Philosophy of Language

Nat Hansen
Forthcoming in Oxford Handbooks Online
Abstract
Experimental philosophy of language uses experimental methods developed in the
cognitive sciences to investigate topics of interest to philosophers of language. This
article describes the methodological background for the development of experimental
approaches to topics in philosophy of language, distinguishes negative and positive
projects in experimental philosophy of language, and evaluates experimental work
on the reference of proper names and natural kind terms. The reliability of expert
judgments vs. the judgments of ordinary speakers, the role that ambiguity plays in
influencing responses to experiments, and the reliability of meta-linguistic judgments
are also assessed.1
Keywords: experimental philosophy, expertise, philosophy of language, meaning,
reference, proper names, natural kind terms, psychological essentialism, intuitions,
philosophical methodology

Introduction

Experimental philosophy of language applies experimental methods used in the cognitive

sciences (experimental psychology, psycholinguistics) to topics of interest to philosophers
of language, such as the meaning of particular kinds of expressions (names, determiners,
natural kind terms, adjectives, etc.), pragmatic phenomena (implicature, presupposition,
metaphor, the semantics-pragmatics boundary, e.g), and methodological issues (the reliability of informal vs. formal experimental methods, the reliability of expert judgments vs.
the judgments of ordinary speakers, e.g.).2
Experimental philosophy of language has become a topic of intense interest in the past
decade, due to the rapid growth of experimental philosophy and the roughly contemporaneous linguistics turn in philosophy of language, which has involved much contemporary work in philosophy of language being informed byor in some cases being indistinguishable fromwork in contemporary linguistics. Indeed, it is not always clear what
1

This paper was written with the support of British Academy grant SQ120050, Quantitative Methods in
Experimental Philosophy of Language. Thanks to Zed Adams, Emma Borg, Daniel Cohnitz, James Genone,

Wikforss for comments.

Soren Haggqvist, Eliot Michaelson, Angel
Pinillos, Mark Pinder and Asa
2
This description is based on the account of experimental philosophy in general given in Knobe (2012).

distinguishes experimental philosophy of language from experimental work in linguistics.

Sometimes the difference is sociological: the distinguishing feature of research in experimental philosophy of language might merely be that it is published in philosophy journals
or is written by theorists who are employed in philosophy departments, rather than departments of linguistics or cognitive science. But there is also a more substantive difference:
work in experimental philosophy of language sometimes explicitly engages with traditional
philosophical debates, such as investigations into of the meaning of names or natural kind
terms. This article will focus on the relevance of experimental philosophy of language for
those debates.
2

Methodological Background

Bogen and Woodward (1988) distinguish the data that are generated in, and are specific to,
experimental contexts from the underlying phenomena that the experiments are designed
to investigate. Theories explain phenomena or facts about phenomena, which have stable, repeatable characteristics which will be detectable by means of different procedures
(p. 317). Data are the observable results generated by experiments, and are evidence for the
existence of phenomena (p. 305). Examples of the kind of phenomena that have interested
experimental philosophers of language are the following:
The extension of knows can vary when certain features of context are varied.
Red will behave more like spotted than like tall in certain entailment patterns.
Godel refers to Godel, not whoever uniquely or best satisfies descriptions associated with the name.
A speaker can have completely false beliefs about a natural kind like gold and yet
still refer to gold with the natural kind term gold.
Experimental philosophy of language investigates these phenomena by gathering experimental data. Data can include metalinguistic judgments or intuitions (about the acceptability of sentences, or the truth value of what is said by a use of a sentence, or whether
one sentence entails another, e.g.), non-metalinguistic actions (how someone responds to a
request to hand me the blue one, e.g.), eye movements, reaction times, brain activity, and
so on (Krifka, 2011).3
As the list of types of data above indicates, it is a standard methodological assumption
guiding experimental philosophy of language that the behavior of speakers is data that
provides evidence for linguistic phenomena. (Behavior is here understood broadlythat
is, not behavioristicallyto include truth-value judgments, patterns of inference, reaction
times, eye movements, brain activity, and so on.) This methodological assumption has
been resisted by some critics of experimental philosophy of language, who argue that facts
3
Intuition is a hotly contested term in contemporary philosophy. For present purposes, intuition
should be understood to pick out a judgment that is not based on conscious reasoning, past or present, ones
own or anothers (Maynes and Gross, 2013, p. 716) Maynes and Gross (2013) provide a very useful survey
of different conceptions of linguistic intuitions and how they figure in debates in linguistics and philosophy.

about speakers behavior are data for a psychological theory, but are not data for theories
about linguistic phenomena (like the reference of proper names) (Deutsch, 2009, p. 449).
The criticism helps to make explicit the fact that experimental philosophers of language do
assume that linguistic phenomena have psychological consequences, which are detectable
in behavior.4
2.1

Negative and positive research programs in experimental philosophy of language

Alexander et al. (2010) distinguish negative and positive research programs in experimental
philosophy. The negative research program in experimental philosophy of language, epitomized by Machery et al. (2004) and Mallon et al. (2009), critiques what they consider to be
a widespread methodology in the philosophy of language. That methodology involves
testing the predictions of theories (paradigmatically, about the way the reference of proper
names is determined) against speakers intuitions about actual or hypothetical examples.
Mallon et al. (2009, p. 338) calls this methodology the method of cases:

The method of cases: The correct theory of reference for a class of terms T is
the theory which is best supported by the intuitions competent users of T have
about the reference of members of T across actual and possible cases.
According to advocates of the negative program, philosophers have navely assumed
that their own intuitions are representative of the intuitions of all competent speakers. If it
turns out that their intuitions are not representative, then there is reason to doubt whether
the theory that was based on those non-representative intuitions is correct. And if there
is widespread variation in intuitions, then there may be reason to wonder whether there
will be a single correct theory of reference that is best supported by the intuitions of
competent speakers. Mallon et al. (2009, p. 342) seem to suggest that the right response
to such variation would be to give up on the project of developing substantive theories of
reference altogether.
But whether the method of cases is genuinely widespread is contested by Deutsch
(2009) and Ludwig (2007). Deutsch (2009) rejects the idea that philosophers use intuitions
as evidence for theories of reference.5 Ludwig (2007, 2010) also denies that intuitions
are evidence for theories of referencehe holds that they are expressions of conceptual
competence, which involves the correct application of concepts. Variation in intuitions
is only evidence that something is interfering with conceptual competence. A less radical
challenge is posed by Devitt (2011, 2012), who argues that intuitions can be evidence for
theories of reference, but the intuitions of experts are better evidence than the intuitions of
ordinary speakers. Variation in intuitions about reference is then only a problem if it is the
intuitions of experts that vary. This objection will be discussed in detail below, in 3.2.2.
4

For more detailed discussion of issues related to this assumption, see the discussion of metainternalism and meta-externalism in Cohnitz and Haukioja (2013).
5
See also Cappelen (2012).

The positive program in experimental philosophy of language is less concerned with

challenges to traditional philosophical methodology than with piecemeal investigations of
particular linguistic phenomena like the meaning of determiners, gradable adjectives, scalar
implicature, and so on. The branch of the positive program that will be discussed below
concerns the meaning of natural kind terms (gold, cat, lemon, etc.). The positive
program accepts that there can be variation in intuitions, but aims to explain that variation
in terms of some shared cognitive mechanism(s). For example, the theories of natural
kind terms offered by Braisby et al. (1996) and Nichols et al. (2015) (discussed in 4.2,
below), involve variations on the idea that natural kind terms are systematically ambiguous.
Variation in intuitions about natural kind terms can then potentially be explained as the
result of different ways of resolving the relevant ambiguity.
3

Reference and Proper Names

Ground zero of the explosion of recent interest in experimental philosophy of language

concerns how proper names refer to the objects they name. The intense debate surrounding
the experimental investigations of names and reference (sparked by Machery et al. 2004)
is partly explained by the fact that proper names have been at the center of philosophical
debates about language since the rise of analytic philosophy in the early 20th century. But
the intensity of the debate is also at least partly to do with the radical and contentious conclusions about philosophical methodology in general that have been drawn by experimental
philosophers on the basis of data involving judgments about the reference of proper names.
3.1

Cross-cultural semantics

Inspired by studies in cultural psychology that provide some support for the idea that cultural differences between Westerners and East Asians affect individuals naive metaphysical systems, tacit epistemologies and the nature of their cognitive processes (Nisbett
et al., 2001, p. 291), Machery et al. (2004) conducted an experiment that they argue yields
evidence that Westerners and East Asians have systematically different intuitions about the
reference of proper names.
The experiment conducted by Machery et al. is designed to test a hypothesis about
descriptivist and causal-historical views of reference. As described by Machery et al.
(p. 2), a descriptivist view of the reference of proper names consists of two components:
D1 Competent speakers associate a description with every proper name. This description
specifies a set of properties.
D2 An object is the referent of a proper name if and only if it uniquely or best satisfies
the description associated with it. . . If the description is not satisfied at all or if many
individuals satisfy it, the name does not refer.
A causal-historical view of the reference of proper names, in contrast, involves two
different components that conflict with the descriptivist view (p. 3):
4

C1 A name is introduced into a linguistic community for the purpose of referring to an

individual. It continues to refer to that individual as long as its uses are linked to the
individual via a causal chain of successive users: every user of the name acquired it
from another user, who acquired it in turn from someone else, and so on, up to the
first user who introduced the name to refer to a specific individual.
C2 Speakers may associate descriptions with names. After a name is introduced, the
associated description does not play any role in the fixation of the referent. The
referent may entirely fail to satisfy the description.
An important test case for evaluating descriptivist vs. causal-historical views would be one
in which a speaker associates a description with a proper name that isnt satisfied by the
individual to whom the name was originally applied and who is linked to current uses of
the name by way of a causal chain. If, in that case, the name is taken to refer to whoever
satisfies the description (or to no one, if nothing satisfies the description), rather than the
person to whom the name was originally applied and who is linked to current uses of the
name by a causal chain, that supports descriptivism and presents a challenge to the causalhistorical view. If the name is not taken to refer to whoever satisfies the description (or is
not taken to fail to refer, if no one satisfies it), but rather is taken to refer to the person to
whom the name was originally applied and who is linked to current uses of the name in the
right way, that supports the causal-historical view and challenges the descriptivist view.
Machery et al. created two types of story that were intended to present Western and
East Asian experimental participants with these crucial test cases. The first type of story
was modeled on Kripkes (1980) Godel case, in which the person causally linked with
the introduction of the name Godel is associated with the description the discoverer of
the incompleteness theorem, which he does not satisfy in the story, but which is uniquely
satisfied by another person, Schmidt. In Kripkes story, Schmidt dies under mysterious circumstances and Godel takes credit for his work. The second type of story was modeled on
Kripkes (1980) Jonah case, which involves a person causally linked with the introduction of the name Jonah, but who does not satisfy any of the descriptions associated with
the name, and which are not satisfied by any other referents either. For both the Godel-type
and Jonah-type stories, Machery et al. created a Western version, with western names
(Godel, e.g.), and an East Asian version, with East Asian names (Tsu Chung Chih,
e.g.). In the Godel case, participants were asked to respond to the following prompt (p. 6):
When John [the speaker in the story] uses the name Godel, is he talking
about:
(A) the person who really discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic? or
(B) the person who got hold of the manuscript and claimed credit for the
work?
Though they found no statistically significant cross-cultural difference in responses to
the Jonah-type stories, Machery et al. did find that there was a statistically significant
5

difference between responses given by Western participants to the Godel-type stories and
those given to those stories by East Asian participants: East Asians responses tended to
be descriptivist ((A)-type responses) , while Western responses tended to be Kripkean
(causal-historical) ((B)-type responses) (see table 1).6
Table 1: Percentage of Kripkean (B-type) responses to the Godel-type stories in Machery
et al. 2004; reported as percentages in Machery 2012
Westerners East Asians
Godel story
58%
29%
Tsu Chung Chih story
55%
32%

The evidence of significant variation between the responses of Western and East Asian
participants to the two versions of the Godel story is the key finding of the study, but
Machery et al. also found substantial variation within each cultural group as well.
Machery et al. argue that the variation they observe undermines philosophers use of
their own intuitions as evidence of what the correct theory of reference for proper names
is. In Mallon et al. (2009), the same theorists argue that many theories in different areas of
philosophy rely on what they call arguments from reference, which presuppose either a
descriptivist or causal-historical view of the reference of certain expressions. Given their
argument that variation in intuitions about the reference of proper names problematizes
the idea that philosophers have evidence that there is a single, correct reference for proper
names, they conclude that there is reason to be skeptical of any philosophical argument that
relies on an argument from reference.
3.2

Criticims of Machery et al. (2004) & Replies

Criticisms of Machery et al. (2004) can be classified as either (i) objections to the experimental design employed in the study, or (ii) objections to the philosophical significance of
the data, even if it has been collected appropriately.7
3.2.1

Objections to the experimental design

Metalinguistic intuitions vs. use: The prompt employed in Machery et al.s (2004)
Godel stories asks participants in the experiment to decide who John [the speaker in the
6

Machery et al. report large standard deviations in responses to the Godel stories, which suggests that
there is a great deal of variation within each of the two cultural groups (p. 8). The finding of intra-cultural
(but not cross-cultural) variation was replicated in Machery et al. (2009), and the finding of cross-cultural
variation was replicated in Machery et al. (2010), using a Chinese translation of the Godel story for Chinese
participants.
7
Genone (2012) is a useful survey of the debate surrounding experimental investigations of theories of
reference for proper names. See Genone 2012, p. 156 for roughly this categorization of responses to Machery
et al. (2004).

story] is talking about when he uses the name Godel. Mart (2009) refers to this type
of task as metalinguistic, and she contrasts metalinguistic intuitions about the reference
of names with how we use names to refer (p. 44):
[Machery et al.] test peoples intuitions about theories of reference, not about
the use of names. But what we think the correct theory of reference determination is, and how we use names to talk about things are two very different
issues.
Because Machery et al. elicit metalinguistic intuitions, Mart argues, the current experiment does not provide any evidence at all about name use (p. 46).8 And we already knew,
from the history of debates between advocates of descriptivist and anti-descriptivist views,
that there is variation in intuitions about what the right theory of reference is for proper
names (p. 45). We dont need experiments to tell us that.
As Ichikawa et al. (2012, n. 3) observe, Marts criticism overshoots. There is not a
sharp separation between linguistic use and responses to metalinguistic tasks. Regarding
a parallel debate in linguistics over the relative merits of metalinguistic intuitions about
the acceptability of sentences vs. the use of those sentences in conversation as evidence
of theories of syntax, Schutze (1996, pp. 81-82) observes that there are two extreme positions one could take about the relation between use and metalinguistic intuition: the
first position is that there is no difference between the two. The second extreme position
is that use and metalinguistic intuition are entirely separate and might differ in arbitrary
ways.9 A much more plausible intermediate view (defended at length in Schutze 1996)
is that metalinguistic intuitions are shaped by the same linguistic competence that shapes
production in ordinary conversation, plus a range of other, experiment-specific factors. On
the intermediate view, metalinguistic intuitions are a source of evidence of the underlying
linguistic competence (though it is important to control for a range of possible interfering
factors).
Machery et al. (2009) attempt to respond to Marts challenge with an experiment that
asks participants to read a version of the Godel story (involving the Chinese astronomer Tsu
Chung Chih), and varies whether participants read a metalinguistic prompt (identical to
the prompt used in Machery et al. 2004), or a linguistic prompt that asks participants
to to make a truth value judgment about what is claimed by the speaker in the story (note,
however, that the linguistic prompt is still metalinguistic: it asks participants to make a
truth value judgment about a claim!) (p. 690):
8

While there are linguistic tasks that dont ask participants to respond to metalinguistic stimuli (elicited
production, e.g., and tasks that request actions in response to commands), the default type of experimental
task (acceptability judgments in syntax, truth value and entailment judgments in semantics and pragmatics)
involves metalinguistic judgments. Birdsong (1989, p. 2) observes that acceptability judgments are the prototypical metalinguistic performance in the language sciences. See Schutze (1996, 2011) for surveys of
different types of evidence for linguistic theories, metalinguistic and otherwise.
9
Schutzes observation was brought to my attention by Cohnitz and Haukioja (2014), which includes a
very helpful and detailed examination of the difference between metalinguistic intuitions and linguistic use.

when Ivy says, Tsu Chung Chih was a great astronomer, do you think that
her claim is: (A) true or (B) false?
Reactions were classified as Kripkean ((B)-type responses in either the linguistic or metalinguistic condition) or non-Kripkean ((A)-type responses in either condition). Machery
et al. (2009) found no difference in the responses of participants to the metalinguistic and
linguistic prompts. But given that the linguistic prompt is also metalinguistic, this result
doesnt address the question whether metalinguistic intuitions and linguistic intuitions
are largely congruent (as Machery et al. claim it does).10
It is true that speakers can have false beliefs about how they actually use language
(see Labov 1996), and those false beliefs can influence their metalinguistic intuitions. But
absent additional evidence, there is little reason to think that metalinguistic judgments about
the reference of proper names diverge substantially from the way speakers use names to
refer.
Semantic reference vs.speaker reference ambiguity: Deutsch (2009) argues that it is
impossible to conclude from Machery et al.s (2004) results that there is cross-cultural or
intra-cultural variation in intuitions about the reference of proper names, because there is a
crucial ambiguity in the prompt that could be affecting participants responses.11 Deutsch
argues that when participants in Machery et al.s (2004) experiment are asked to choose
who John is talking about with his uses of Godel, they might reasonably interpret that
question in either of the following ways (p. 454):
(Q1) To whom does John intend to refer when he uses Godel?
(Q2) To whom does the name, Godel, refer when John uses it?
Q1 interprets the prompt as asking about something pragmatic, namely speaker reference
(who speakers intend the name to refer to). Q2 interprets the prompt as asking about
semantic reference (who the name refers to in virtue of the conventions of the language).12
Machery et al.s conclusions about cross-cultural and intra-cultural variation in intuitions
about the reference of names presuppose that participants are interpreting the prompt as
Q2, but Q1 seems like an equally reasonable interpretation.13 It is impossible to tell, based
on the results reported in Machery et al. (2004), how much of the observed variation in
responses is due to different interpretations of the prompt and how much due to actual
variation in referential intuitions.
10

When Mart herself recommends an improved prompt for collecting evidence of theories of reference
based on use, it too involves a metalinguistic judgment (p. 47).
11
See also Kripke (1980, p. 85 n. 36), Ichikawa et al. (2012, pp. 5960), Ludwig (2007, p. 150) and Sytsma
and Livengood (2011, 2.2).
12
See Kripke (1977) for the canonical statement of the distinction.
13
Ichikawa et al. (2012, p. 59) and Deutsch (2009, p. 454 n. 7) both say that it is easier to hear the prompt
as asking about speaker reference. Machery et al. (2015) argue that because the prompt does not ask about
any particular use of Godel, it isnt possible to figure out what intentions the speaker might have had in
using it, and so the semantic reference interpretation is the only one available.

But revised versions of Machery et al.s experiment that eliminate or control for the
ambiguity replicate the earlier findings of variation. In Machery et al. (2015), Chinese and
American participants read the Godel story used in Machery et al. (2004), but with a
modified prompt designed to exclude the speakers reference interpretation (When John
uses the name Godel, regardless of who he might intend to be talking about, he is actually
talking about. . . ). Using the revised version, they found significant variation between Chinese and American participants, with Chinese participants again tending to give responses
consistent with a descriptivist theory of reference for proper names.
Ambiguity in epistemic perspective: Sytsma and Livengood (2011) make the case that
Machery et al.s (2004) Godel stories involve an ambiguity of epistemic perspective. The
only thing that the character in the Godel story, John, is said to have heard about Godel is
that he is the discoverer of the incompleteness of arithmetic, while the narrator of the story
has much more information about Godel and Schmidt: namely, that Schmidt actually did
the work in question, and that Godel took credit for it. When participants are prompted
with the question
When John uses the name Godel, is he talking about:
(A) the person who really discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic? or
(B) the person who got hold of the manuscript and claimed credit for the work?
From whose epistemic perspective should they attempt to answer the question: Johns, or
the narrators? If participants take up Johns epistemic perspective in responding to the
prompt, limiting themselves to the information that he hasthat Godel is the discoverer
of the incompleteness of arithmeticthen they could conceivably choose the apparently
descriptivist option (A). Crucially, participants could choose (A) even if from their own
epistemic perspective (that of the narrator), they would opt for the causal-historical option
(B).
Sytsma and Livengood hypothesized that they could significantly lower the percentage
of causal-historical ((B)-type) responses by modifying the prompt to emphasize Johns
epistemic perspective, and that they could significantly raise the percentage of (B) responses by modifying the prompt to emphasize the narrators epistemic perspective. They
demonstrated this in their first experiment, shifting (B)-type responses from the level of the
original Machery et al. prompt (39.4%) down to 22% when the Johns-perspective prompt
was used, and up to 57.4% when the narrators-perspective prompt was used (p. 322).
A second experiment that used a prompt that made the narrators perspective even more
prominent raised the percentage of (B)-type responses to 73.8% among non-philosophers
(p. 325). A third, within-subjects experiment revealed that each version of the prompt
significantly affected participants responses to the Godel story (see table 2).
A fourth experiment asked participants to respond to the original Machery et al. prompt,
and then choose one of two restatements of the prompt that best corresponded with how

Table 2: Percentage of (B)-type (causal-historical) responses to different prompts in a

within-subjects experiment (Sytsma & Livengood 2011, p. 325)
Original
42.9%

Johns perspective narrators perspective clarified narrators perspective

31.4%
57.1%
74.3%

they understood the question. One restatement emphasized Johns perspective, one emphasized the narrators perspective. Participants who gave (B)-type responses tended to
choose the narrators perspective restatement, while participants who chose (A)-type responses tended to choose the Johns-perspective restatement (p. 327).
These patterns of responses are consistent with the existence of an ambiguity in Machery et al.s original prompt. Sytsma and Livengood argue that the appearance of variation
in semantic intuitions in the original study can be explained instead by participants disambiguating the prompt in different ways. That undermines Machery et al.s conclusion that
their results are evidence of variation in semantic intuitions, because it appears that facts
about epistemic perspective, rather than intuitions about the semantic reference of Godel,
could be driving participants responses.
While Sytsma and Livengoods experiments do pose a serious challenge to Machery et al. (2004), further experimental work has uncovered statistically significant crosscultural variation in responses to versions of the Godel story, even while employing Sytsma
and Livengoods clarified narrators perspective prompt (Beebe and Undercoffer 2015,
Sytsma et al. 2014).
Summary: There are good reasons to question aspects of the experimental design used
in Machery et al. (2004). However, experiments that disambiguate speakers reference and
semantic reference (Machery et al. 2015), and disambiguate relevant epistemic perspectives
(Beebe and Undercoffer 2015, Sytsma et al. 2014) address those worries and replicate the
findings of cross-cultural and intra-cultural variation in participants responses to Godeltype stories. If the results of these recent experiments hold up, then this would appear to be
a case in which an imperfectly designed experiment uncovers evidence of a phenomenon
that is confirmed by more carefully designed experiments.
3.2.2

An objection to the philosophical significance of the data: expertise

Devitt (2011, 2012) argues against Machery et al. on the grounds that ordinary speakers are
not expert judges of reference. He maintains that while the intuitions of ordinary speakers
provide some evidence of facts about the reference of proper names, the intuitions of experts (linguists and philosophers of language) provide better evidence. We should expect
variation between the intuitions of experts and laypeople, and the existence of variation
among non-experts does not pose a problem for the use of expert intuitions as evidence for
theories of reference.

10

What Devitt calls linguistic intuitions are what Mart calls metalinguistic intuitions
(discussed in 3.2): fairly immediate unreflective judgments about the syntactic and semantic properties of linguistic expressions (p. 482).14 Devitts view is that linguistic intuitions are theory-laden empirical opinions or empirical unreflective judgments (p. 488).
That is, judgments about whether a sentence is true or false, or whether an expression refers
to one object or another are akin to judgments about whether some animal is an echidna or
some white thing sticking out of the ground is a pigs jawbone or not. Just as one would be
warranted in treating a judgment that an animal is an echidna as evidence that the animal
is indeed an echidna to the extent that the judge is an expert on echidnas, one is warranted
in treating linguistic judgments as evidence that what they represent is true to the extent
that the judge is an expert on linguistic matters. And Devitt says that, when it comes to
linguistic intuitions, it is linguists (and philosophers of language) who are the most expert
(pp. 499500).15
Experimenting on the expertise defense: The idea that the intuitions of philosophers
and linguists are more reliable indicators of linguistic facts than those of ordinary speakers
has been scrutinized by both experimental philosophers and experimental linguists.16 Culbertson and Gross (2009) ran an experiment to test Devitts claim that linguists have more
reliable judgments about syntactic phenomena than ordinary speakers. Because the syntactic facts are disputed, Culbertson and Gross use intra-group consistency of judgments as a
measure of reliability (intra-group consistency is a necessary, but not sufficient condition
for the reliability of the judgments of that group). Participants in Culbertson and Grosss
experiment were categorized into four different groups, based on their experience with theoretical syntax and cognitive science: Ph.Ds in linguistics (LOTS), students with at least
one class in generative syntax (SOME), students with no experience in syntax but experience in other areas of cognitive science (LITTLE), and students with no experience
of cognitive science (NONE). Participants rated the acceptability of 73 sentences taken
from an introductory linguistics textbook.
The experiment revealed that while all of the groups with at least some exposure to cognitive science (LOTS, SOME, and LITTLE) all showed equally high intra-group average
correlation values, participants in the group with no exposure to cognitive science were
not well correlated with one another, and the average correlation was significantly lower
than the average correlation of the other three groups (pp. 729730). Furthermore, LOTS,
SOME and LITTLE were highly correlated with one another, and more correlated with
each other than the NONE group (pp. 731732). Culbertson and Gross interpret this result
as indicating that once participants acquire a minimum degree of task-specific knowledge
(familiarity with the acceptability task in this case), further expertise does not affect the
14

Devitt (2010, p. 836) explicitly compares his and Marts terminology.

Devitts views about expertise extend only to (meta)linguistic intuitions, not to other forms of linguistic
or non-linguistic behavior, which he considers to be more direct evidence of linguistic reality (Devitt 2006,
p. 500; 2011 p. 425).
16
For a survey of the expertise defense as it arises in areas beyond philosophy of language, see Nado
(2014).
15

11

reliability of their syntactic intuitions.17

In a separate evaluation of the expertise defense, Machery (2012) gave the Tsu Chung
Chih version of the Godel story to a variety of professional linguists, philosophers and nonexpert holders of Ph.Ds. Machery formed two groups of specialists who he thought were
likely to have expertise relevant to the reference of proper names: philosophers of language
and semanticists (Group 1) and researchers in discourse analysis, historical linguistics and
sociolinguistics (Group 2). The central result of this experiment is that Group 1 has a significantly higher proportion of Kripkean intuitions than Group 2 (p. 48), and the proportions
of Kripkean responses among non-expert participants (Group 3) is intermediate between
Group 1 and Group 2 (see table 3).
Table 3: Percentage of Kripkean responses among semanticists and philosophers of language (Group 1), discourse analysts, historical linguists, and sociolinguists (Group 2) and
non-experts with Ph.Ds (Group 3) (Machery 2012, p. 49)
Group 1 Group 2 Group 3
86.4%
68.7%
76.9%
Machery interprets these results as showing that expertise has an inconsistent effect
on intuitions about reference: sometimes it correlates with a greater degree of Kripkean
intuitions than non-experts (Group 1), but other times it correlates with a lesser degree of
Kripkean intuitions than non-experts (Group 2). Machery takes this inconsistent effect of
expertise to undermine the expertise defense (p. 50), which should predict a uniform effect
of expertise on intuitions (assuming that there is only a single type of linguistic expertise).18
Sprouse et al. (2013) gather a large set of data relevant to debates about the relative
reliability of the judgments of ordinary speakers and linguistic experts. The theoretical
background to Sprouse et al.s study is a dispute in syntactic theory regarding the reliability of formal vs. informal methods of collecting acceptability judgments, which parallels
the debate over the reliability of expert vs. ordinary speaker intuitions in philosophy.19
The informal method of collecting acceptability judgments is what philosophers call an
armchair method: it tends to involve small numbers of expert participants (sometimes
just the theorist herself), it usually does not involve statistical tests of significance, and
it usually does not control for known sources of bias (order of presentation bias, experimenter bias, etc.). Formal methods of collecting acceptability judgments tend to involve
substantially more participants, substantially more tokens per condition, substantially more
response options, relatively nave non-linguist participants, substantially more instructions,
and substantially more statistical analyses (p. 224).
17

See Devitt (2010) and Gross and Culbertson (2011) for further discussion.
Note that this experiment used a prompt (when Ivy uses the name Tsu Chung Chih, who do you
think she is actually talking about?) that doesnt distinguish semantic and speaker reference as clearly as
the disambiguated prompt in Machery et al. (2015). It is possible that different experts have different levels
of sensitivity to the semantic/speaker reference distinction, which could account for the different rates of
Kripkean responses. Thanks to a referee for this observation.
19
See Sprouse (2013) for a survey of the debate in linguistics.
18

12

Sprouse et al. collected a random sample of 300 sentence types used in informally
collected acceptability judgments in the journal Linguistic Inquiry (a leading theoretical
journal among generative syntacticians. . . [intended] to stand as a proxy for the use of informal methods in syntax more broadly) (p. 222) from 20012010. The 300 sentences
consisted of 150 unacceptable sentence types and 150 more acceptable controls, forming
150 pairwise phenomena (p. 223) like the following:
?? Ginny remembered to have bought the beer.
Ginny remembered to bring the beer. (p. 237)
The results of the experiment (936 participants distributed across three versions of the
experiment evaluating different judgment tasks) indicate a 95% convergence rate between
informal and formal methods of collecting acceptability judgments, with a margin of error
of 5.35.8% (p. 230).
These results indicate that the choice of formal vs. informal methods of gathering data
in syntactic theory does not have an overwhelming effect on the empirical content of the
data. While it doesnt bear directly on debates about armchair vs. experimental methods
of gathering data about theories of reference, Sprouse et al.s experiment does suggest that
in the vast majority of cases, linguistic expertise does not play a crucial role in shaping
intuitions (which accords with Culbertson and Grosss findings).
But Sprouse et al.s results also suggest that it would be a mistake to put too much evidential weight on intuitions that concern only a very small sample of non-randomly chosen
expressions (Godel and Tsu Chung Chih). That lends additional weight to a criticism
of Machery et al. raised by Devitt (2011), Deutsch (2015) and Ichikawa et al. (2012), that
the Godel story is only one example of many that Kripke presents as counterexamples
to descriptivism about proper names. Pro-descriptivist intuitions about a single example
do not demonstrate that a speaker has pro-descriptivist intuitions in general. This indicates
the need for for experiments (or corpus studies) that consider how experts and ordinary
speakers react to a larger sample of proper names.
4

Natural kind terms

4.1

Theoretical background

There is substantial overlap between the experimental investigation of natural kind terms
and proper names because both involve a dispute between descriptivist and non-descriptivist
theories of reference. Putnam (1975a, p. 140) and Kripke (1980) critique what Putnam
calls the traditional view of the meaning of natural kind terms like gold, lemon and
tiger.20 The traditional view of the meaning of these terms consists of the following
components:
20

The traditional view is typically attributed to Kant. Katz (1975) defends a version of the traditional view
against Putnam and Kripkes criticisms.

13

1. The meaning of cat (e.g.) is a conjunction of properties (animal, carnivorous, has

four legs, etc.)
2. For each property P associated with cat (e.g.), cats have property P is an analytic
truth (necessarily true, knowable a priori)
3. Anything with all of the properties associated with cats is a cat is also an analytic
truth (necessarily true, knowable a priori)
Both Kripke and Putnam point out that there are counterexamples to the traditional theory. Consider the expression tiger, and the conjunction of properties large carnivorous
quadrepedal feline, tawny yellow in color with blackish transverse stripes and white belly
(Kripke, 1980, p. 119). It seems very implausible to think that tiger wouldnt apply to a
creature that shared all other properties with tigers but that had only three legs. But that is
entailed by the traditional view. So the traditional view cant be right about the meaning of
terms like tiger.
A more sophisticated version of the traditional view introduces the idea of a cluster of
properties associated with a natural kind term. If an object satisfies enough of the properties
(some of which might be weighted differently), then it would count as a member of the
relevant kind. The cluster view would avoid the obvious counterexamples that make the
traditional descriptivist view unacceptable. But Kripke (1980) argues that even the cluster
version of descriptivism is untenable. He argues that (1) the cluster view doesnt provide
sufficient conditions for an object to belong to a natural kindeven if an object possesses
all of the properties associated with gold or tiger it is possible that it wouldnt count
as gold or a tiger (p. 120); and (2) that it isnt necessary to satisfy any of the properties
associated with the kind term for an object to count as a member of the relevant kind
(p. 121).
On Kripkes anti-descriptivist, causal-historical view of natural kind terms, they refer
to the essence of the relevant kind (p. 138), and they do so not by way of description.
Speakers beliefs about the kind can be completely incorrect and yet the term will still refer,
as long as it is linked in the right way to an original use by way of a causal-historical chain
of use.
4.2
4.2.1

Experimenting on natural kind terms

Braisby et al. (1996)

Braisby et al. (1996) ran two experiments to evaluate what they call the essentialist view
(which they attribute to Kripke 1980 and Putnam 1975b) of natural kind terms, which they
characterize as follows (p. 248):
1. Essential properties determine reference.
2. Non-essential (or contingent) properties do not determine reference.
3. Reference is determined independently of peoples beliefs about which properties
determine reference.

14

For essentialism to yield predictions that can be empirically tested, it must be assumed that
speakers implicitly believe (13) and that those beliefs will be manifested in their linguistic
behavior (this turns essentialism into psychological essentialism).
Braisby et al. ran two experiments to test (psychological) essentialist predictions like
the following:
If beliefs about an essential property of a kind turn out to be false (cats turn out to be
robots, not mammals, e.g.), speakers will still apply the kind term (cat) to the same
objects.
Braisby et al. found significant divergences from (psychological) essentialist predictions.
For example, only 58% of participants in one experiment, and 76% in another, responded
to a story based on Putnams (1975a) Martian robot cat thought experiment in accordance
with (psychological) essentialist predictions.
Braisby et al.s experiments also indicated a tendency among some participants to respond to their stories with prima facie contradictions. So, for example, in response to
stories modeled on Putnams Martian robot cat thought experiment, 31% of participants in
the first experiment, and 15% in the second assigned statements like the following the same
truth value:
(+) Tibby is a cat, though we were wrong about her being a mammal.
() Tibby is not a cat, though she is a robot controlled from Mars.
Neither essentialism nor the cluster theory predicts this pattern of apparently contradictory responses. Braisby et al. propose that a representational change theory, which
holds that natural kind terms can have different senses (and extensions) in different contexts, can explain this puzzling pattern of data. Roughly, such a theory would encode both
a descriptivist and a non-descriptivist (particularist) interpretation of natural kind terms,
and seemingly contradictory responses would be explained in terms of speakers switching
between the two interpretations.
4.2.2

Jylkka et al. (2009)

Jylkka et al. (2009) aim to compare the plausibility of descriptivism, (psychological) essentialism and Braisby et al.s representational change theory (essentially a form of ambiguity theory). Participants were asked to respond to complex scenarios that involved a
substance X that shares superficial properties with substance Y, and is believed by experts
to share a deep structure with Y. Participants were first asked to judge whether substance
X is substance Y. Then participants were then told that later discoveries showed that substance X in fact does not share a deep structure with Y. Participants were asked whether
their earlier judgment X is Y or X is not Y was (a) justified and (b) strictly speaking
correct.
Jylkka et al. (2009) found that participants tended to give answers to the first question
that were compatible with essentialism: if X and Y shared the same deep structure, they
15

tended to say that X is Y; if X and Y did not share the same deep structure, they tended to
say that X is not Y.21 That result undermines a traditional descriptivist position, but does
not distinguish between essentialism and the ambiguous representational change theory
(or indeed a cluster theory: see Haggqvist and Wikforss 2015). In response to part (b) of
the second question, which asked whether their earlier judgments were strictly speaking
correct, 69% of responses were compatible with essentialism (and an ambiguity theory and
a cluster theory), 28% were compatible with an ambiguity theory or a cluster theory, but not
essentialism, and 3% were in the middle of the response scale and labeled as compromises.
A second experiment offered an explicitly ambiguous response option (on the one
hand yes, on the other hand no) in order to more directly probe the ambiguity theory. As
in the first experiment, participants were asked to say whether the earlier judgment that X
and Y were the same substance is correct or not when it turns out that X and Y do not
share the same deep structure (only superficially similar properties). According to Jylkka
et al. (2009), essentialism predicts not correct answers, descriptivism predicts correct
answers, and representational change theory predicts explicitly ambiguous answers. The
results of the second experiment are shown in table 4.
Table 4: Results of Jylkkas second experiment
Q: When X and Y turn out not to share
deep structure, was it correct to judge
No Yes On the one hand yes. . .
that X is Y?
on the other hand no
48% 22%
17%

Cant say
12%

Surprisingly, Jylkka et al. (2009) take these results to support essentialism on the grounds
that essentialist answers were the most common response. But this pattern of responses in
fact both presents a serious challenge to essentialism, because of the large number of responses that are incompatible with essentialist predictions, and it suggests that there is
substantial interpersonal variation in how one responds to the scenario, which includes a
minority response (on the one hand yes. . . on the other hand no) that is most easily explained by a representational change theory.
4.2.3

Genone and Lombrozo (2012)

Genone and Lombrozo (2012) present evidence that they take to problematize both pure
descriptivist and pure causal-historical theories of the reference of natural kind terms, and
which they take to motivate a hybrid theory that incorporates both descriptive and causalhistorical components. They constructed an experiment that asked participants to judge
whether two speakers using an invented kind term (tyleritis) for a disease were having
a thought about the same disease (p. 725) in four conditions that varied the descriptive
information the speakers associated with the relevant expression and the causal origin of
21

For criticism of Jylkka et al.s scenarios on the grounds that they prime essentialist responses, see Haggqvist and Wikforss (2015).

16

the expression used by each speaker, so that in some conditions they matched and in some
conditions they were different (see table 5).
Table 5: Percentages of yes responses indicating co-reference in Genone and Lombrozos
Experiment 1
Description Causal origin Yes responses
Part I
Different
Same
44%
Part II
Same
Same
98%
Part III
Same
Different
53%
Part IV
Different
Different
2%

Genone and Lombrozo found that when descriptive information and causal origin coincided (Part II), responses clearly indicated co-reference, and when both factors differed
(Part IV), responses clearly indicated lack of co-reference.
The interesting results occur in Parts I and III, neither of which is significantly different
from a 50% response (p. 726). Genone and Lombrozo found no significant correlation
between participants answers to Part I and their answers to Part II, indicating that the near50% responses were not due to participants splitting into groups with pure descriptivist
and pure causal responses (if there were such groups, yes responses in Part I should
be correlated with no responses in Part III). They conclude that these findings suggest
that most participants utilize both descriptive and causal information in making reference
judgments (p. 727).
A second experiment that included more specific information about the causal origin
of the relevant information replicated the findings of Experiment 1: Part I and III again
showed intermediate results, and responses in those Parts were not correlated with each
other. Parts II and IV showed clear agreement and disagreement, also as in experiment 1.
Genone and Lombrozo argue that the possibility of a hybrid theory of reference that
their evidence supports poses a challenge to the skeptical methodological conclusions that
Machery et al. (2004) and Mallon et al. (2009) draw from the observation of intercultural and intra-cultural variation in intuitions about reference. The variation Machery et al. observe is consistent with all speakers sharing a hybrid theory of reference,
but differing in their preferred strategy for combining causal and descriptive information
in making reference judgments (p. 732).22 Variation would then not be due to variation in whether speakers treat names as having their reference determined in descriptivist
or causal-historical terms, but in the effects of as-yet-unspecified contextual factors on a
sharedpart-descriptivist, part causal-historicalsemantics.
22

Machery et al. (2004, p. 8) recognize that it is a very live possibility that the variability exists even at
the individual level, so that a given individual might have causal-historical intuitions on some occasions and
descriptivist intuitions on other occasions, but they conclude (contrary to Genone and Lombrozo) that that
possibility shows that the assumption of universality is just spectacularly misguided.

17

4.2.4

Nichols et al. (2015)

If, as the experimental evidence from Genone and Lombrozo (2012) suggests, whether
speakers employ a descriptivist or causal-historical interpretation of natural kind terms can
vary depending on contextual factors, then it should be possible to construct experiments
in which varying such contextual factors affects which interpretation speakers use. Nichols
et al. (2015) construct such experiments, and find evidence in support of what they call an
ambiguity view of natural kind terms. According to the ambiguity view,
in some cases, the reference of a token is fixed by a causal-historical convention; in other cases, the reference of a token of the same type is fixed by a
descriptivist convention. (p. 8)
Nichols et al. (2015) claim to find support for the ambiguity view in four experiments.
The experiments concern the catoblepas, a mythical creature described as having scales
on its back, a head like a bull and a gaze that, if met, causes instant death. According
to the story used in the experiment, researchers think that descriptions of the catoblepas
were based on reports of encounters with wildebeests. In their first experiment, Nichols
et al. asked participants whether catoblepas are more like rabbits (really exist) or like
goblins (dont really exist). Participants who read a neutral story about triceratops before
reading the catoblepas story tended to say that catoblepas did not really exista prima facie
descriptivist response.23 But participants who were primed with a story about triceratops
that ascribed many false beliefs to earlier scientists (that triceratops was a bison, e.g.) while
implying that reference was to the same species of animal throughout had significantly less
descriptivist responses to the catoblepas story.
A second experiment asked participants to register their agreement with two statements
after reading the catoblepas story used in the first experiment (minus the fact about the
killer gaze):
1. Catoblepas refers to wildebeests.
2. Catoblepas exist.
Participants agreed with statement 1 to a greater degree than statement 2. Nichols et al. find
this result puzzling, arguing that if catoblepas refers to wildebeests, then catoblepas exist.
Nichols et al. suggest that the ambiguity theory offers a way of explaining the puzzling
result if the refers to statement primes the causal-historical interpretation of catoblepas
and the existence statement primes the descriptivist interpretation.24
23

Nichols et al. (2015) seem to assume that the causal-historical theory wouldnt treat catoblepas as
having no reference at all, because of the existence of a causal-historical connection to wildebeests.
24
A referee suggested that a subject might hear the sentence Catoblepas refers to wildebeests as pragmatically conveying something like the notion of the mythical cantoblepas came about because of encounters
with wildebeests. If thats the case, someone who agrees with statement 1 because they agree with what it
pragmatically conveys might at the same time deny that catoblepas exist, and that wouldnt pose a problem
for the causal-historical theory. Pinillos (2015) discusses some related worries about how the experiments in
Nichols et al. (2015) are interpreted.

18

In a third experiment, Nichols et al. found further puzzling patterns of agreement and
disagreement to statements about catoblepas. Participants tended to agree with statement
1. and disagree with statement 2.:
1. Catoblepas are wildebeests.
2. Wildebeests are catoblepas.
Nichols et al. assume that on the causal-historical view, catoblepas and wildebeests
are co-referential, so 1 and 2 should be equivalent.25 Furthermore, responses to 1 were
significantly different from responses to statement 3:
3. Catoblepas exist.
Each of these results is prima facie puzzling on a (psychologized) causal-historical view
about the reference of catoblepas, which should predict that, given the information in the
stories, participants should treat catoblepas and widebeests as co-referential, and that
if they take catoblepas to refer, then they should infer that catoblepas exist.
Nichols et al. replicated the difference between agreement with Catoblepas are wildebeests and Catoblepas exist even in a within-subjects follow up experiment, when participants saw both statements side-by-side. They argue that the ambiguity view can explain
this pattern of responses: when it appears in subject position, catoblepas carries an existence presupposition, and participants aim to accommodate the presupposition, which
requires adopting the causal-historical interpretation of catoblepas. But in statements
2 and 3, when it occurs in predicate position and in an existence statement, respectively,
there is no presupposition of existence, and participants are free to assign the descriptivist
interpretation to catoblepas.
A fourth (within-subjects) experiment that used a version of the catoblepas story intended to make causal-historical components more salient replicated the earlier findings
that participants would both agree with Catoblepas are wildebeests and disagree with
Catoblepas exist, and also yielded responses to Catoblepas are wildebeests that were
significantly above the midpoint (unlike earlier experiments). Like Braisby et al., Nichols
et al. explain the apparent contradictoriness of these responses in terms of an ambiguity (or
semantic indecision (Lewis, 1999) that can be resolved in different ways) in natural kind
terms.
4.2.5

Summary

Several studies (Braisby et al. 1996, Genone and Lombrozo 2012, and Nichols et al. 2015)
have found support for either hybrid descriptive and causal-historical interpretations of
25

If catoblepas and wildebeests are not co-referential, then it is not puzzling why responses to 1 and 2
would differ: participants might be treating catoblepas as a subset of wildebeests, which would lead them
to agree with 1 and disagree with 2. For example, one should agree with dogs are animals but disagree with
animals are dogs. Thanks to Daniel Cohnitz for discussion of this point.

19

natural kind terms, or versions of an ambiguity theory that also incorporates both interpretations.26 Even Jylkka et al (2009), which attempts to defend a form of psychological
essentialism, presents evidence that indicates there is a minority of participants whose responses are most easily explained by an ambiguity theory.
5

Conclusion

The negative program in experimental philosophy of language has provoked a great deal
of debate. That is at least partly to do with the contentiousness of its characterization
of the allegedly widespread philosophical methodology that assumes and relies on the
fact that philosophers intuitions are representative of those of all competent speakers. The
critical attention given to the negative program tends to overshadow the less radical positive
program.27 The positive program in experimental philosophy does not set out to undermine
traditional philosophical methodology, but to supplement it with experimental methods.
This article has only touched on one branch of the positive program, namely research
on the reference of natural kind terms. But the positive program is wide-ranging, diverse,
and developing rapidly. It includes investigations of whether moral considerations affect
the interpretation of the determiner many (Cova and Egre, 2015), how speakers understand the determiner most (Pietroski et al., 2009), and the role that world knowledge
plays in the interpretation of donkey sentences like Every farmer who owns a donkey
beats it (Geurts, 2002). Philosophers have used experimental methods to investigate the
understanding of vague terms (Raffman, 2014; Ripley, 2015), epistemic modals (Knobe
and Yalcin, 2014), and whether (and to what extent) the context of use affects the extension of knows (Buckwalter, 2010; Buckwalter and Schaffer, 2013; Hansen and Chemla,
2013), color adjectives (Hansen and Chemla, 2013, 2014) and aesthetic adjectives (Liao
and Meskin, 2015).28
The boundary between semantics and pragmatics has been investigated by looking at
whether autistic speakers (who have significant pragmatic deficits) can understand primary pragmatic processes like quantifier domain restriction (de Villiers et al., 2007, 2012,
2013), whether minimal propositions play a role in linguistic understanding (Bezuidenhout
and Cutting, 2002), and whether metaphors are any less paraphrasable than literal utterances (Phelan, 2010). Finally, philosophers pursuing the positive program in experimental philosophy of language have investigated scalar implicature (Geurts and Pouscoulous,
2009), a phenomenon that has received intense attention from linguists and psychologists.29
The positive program will undoubtedly continue to expand both in terms of the range of
topics that receive experimental treatment and in the sophistication with which those topics
are investigated, advancing traditional debates and raising new questions for philosophers
26

See Mart (2015) for critical discussion of these results.

Genone (2012, p. 153), for example, says that Machery et al. (2004) has become an exemplar for a
particular way of understanding the goals, methods, and prospects for experimental philosophy.
28
While this article was going to press, Josh Knobe independently posted a similar list surveying recent work in experimental semantics at the Experimental Philosophy blog: http://philosophycommons.
27

typepad.com/xphi/2015/04/formal-semantics-and-experimental-philosophy.html.
29

For surveys, see Chemla and Singh (2014a,b) and Phelan (2014).

20

of language.

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